August 29, 2013
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A Handful of Groats
Who likes some good old fashioned mayhem involving knights, mercenaries and castles? Everybody? Excellent. This is the tale of a knight with ambiguous motives who wanders into a small town. This knight goes to the local inn and hears all about the place: it’s being fought over by three people, and their fight is breaking the townsfolk, both financially and physically. So this knight decides that the best way to make a few bucks is by turning these three people even further against each other by killing/kidnapping various members of each group. This is another case where it’s difficult to dig much into anything without giving way too much away, but whether you like your adventure tales grand or maybe not so grand you’ll find plenty to like here. Rob does a great job of plotting everything out intricately while still keeping the allegiances easy for the reader to follow. He’s also come a long way in his depictions of fight scenes, as everything flowed together smoothly from panel to panel. That may sound like faint praise, but it’s really not easy to depict fluid action in a static panel format, and he nailed it. He’s still building an impressive comics library (and he sent along two more books with this, so he’s adding to that library at an impressive pace), and there’s still plenty of stuff in here that just about anybody should at least try out. So hey, if you’re a Game of Thrones fan, but maybe think that that show is somehow not quite cynical enough, you’re in luck!
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Posted by Kevin
August 27, 2013
Website (for Congressman John Lewis)
Website (for Nate Powell)
March Book One
It always amazes me that I can be so wrong about a subject where I like to think I know pretty much what happened. Before I get started I should point out that this is written by Congressman John Lewis, the last surviving speaker Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 march on Washington. Which you should already know by his name, but if there’s one thing this country is good at it’s forgetting its history. Anyway, I had a number of assumptions about the upbringing of John Lewis, purely based on seeing him speak here and there. For example, I assumed that his parents had been the victims of some particularly awful racism, and this at least partly led John to take his life in the direction that he did. But that wasn’t the case. While I’m sure his parents were the victims of some awful racism (pretty much every black person was when John was a kid), they were very much the types of people who were happy to keep their heads down and try to lead normal, quiet lives. I also foolishly assumed that non-violent protestors just showed up to protests with the patience of saints, but in reality members of the groups would do training sessions where they taunted each other, spit on friends and generally tried everything they could think of to get the other person to lash out. Not everybody could do it, which makes sense, as I don’t know if I’d have that kind of tolerance in me either. Oh, and the law that desegregated the schools, the decision that is considered such a landmark today? It took a good decade before any kind of justice was able to come from that decision, and it wouldn’t have come at all without people like John Lewis. John grew up on a farm and was fascinated by chickens as a kid, getting a little too attached to them (he was on a farm, after all, and things rarely end well for chickens on a farm), but he generally had a good life. His life changed when his uncle took him on a trip to Buffalo, which let John see the reactions of his uncle as they drove through several states that were not safe for black people. And hey, there’s no reason to keep them a secret, if you don’t know them already: Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee. Gee, what do those states have in common? Anyway, he saw how his uncle visibly relaxed when they finally got to Ohio, and when John got to Buffalo he saw things that he had never seen before, like black people living next door to white people with no problems. This set John on his path, as he knew that he wanted something more for himself than a life on the farm, and the rest of the book tells the story of his sneaking off to school when his parents wanted him to stay home to work on the farm, starting to preach, getting noticed by King and participating in sit-ins at lunch counters at stores. There’s at least one more book in this series, and it was smart of them to release it in stages like this, as even this much racism is a lot to take in all at once. John and Andrew do a ridiculously thorough and engrossing job of telling John’s story, which is something I was a little worried about with two people so new to the comics field. Really, they make it look easy. As for Nate Powell, he outdoes himself again here, and I’m thrilled that he’s finally going to get some small amount of fame and recognition for his work. It’s a fascinating story, and if you don’t know it you owe it to yourself to learn all about it. $14.95
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Posted by Kevin
August 26, 2013
Website
Driftwood City
I’d like to start this off by praising Jason for getting one little thing right that lots of people seem to forget: he puts the dates for all of his strips on their last page. As this is a collection of his favorite strips from his run on Laterborn (with a few more included from anthologies and five new strips if you’re one of the people who already has all of the original issues of that fine series), it provides some helpful context. He even gave brief synopses of where he was at in his life with each strip, so there’s plenty of new material right there for fans of the series. One question right off the bat: was Laterborn #2 so bad? I think that’s the only one that isn’t represented here, but I don’t have that issue so it’s a mystery to me. Anyway, subjects in here include Jason as a hamburger, the “peace on earth” sign that went up after 9/11 and what happened to it when we went to one of our stupid wars, a perfect moment of the Humpty Hump, his story of a teacher that actually inspired him to action in high school (it’s his favorite piece and probably mine too), his first real crush in 8th grade and his theory for why it fell apart, a Friday night in college, his method for letting people know that he was available in his dorm room, how an old teacher dealt with the grief of the death of his daughter, an awkward plea for a girlfriend from the lead singer of a band he was watching, how Dr. Mario brought his friends together, aquarium soaps, a Taco Bell on the beach, the awkward closing of a local book store, the allure of the Golden Gate Bridge, and a few more strips that I’ll leave as a total surprise, as it still makes no sense for me to ruin such things. Jason has a real knack for finding the meaning in moments, and he’s not at all shy about detailing some of the shitty things he did back in the day, as his thoughtless gay slurs from being a kid would prove. You’re bound to find at least one high school/college tale here you can relate to, and it’s more likely that you’ll find several. Give this a shot and, as I’ve been trying to make absolutely clear, it’s still very much worth it if you’re already caught up on Laterborn. $12
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Posted by Kevin
August 21, 2013
Website
The Hic and Hoc Illustrated Journal of Humor Volume One: The United States
Do you like your comics funny? Do you like some or most of the creators I listed in the tags section (right below this post, in big letters, you can’t miss them)? Then this one should be an easy call for you. There, now that I’ve made that case, I’ll go about my afternoon… wait, you want something of substance? Egh, fine. Laurent Barnett does the “Me Likes You” comics (which you should already be reading on a regular basis), and she was one of the editors, so there, that’s substantive. Strips in here include Noah Van Sciver’s fever dreams (both with and without music), funny jokes that aren’t really jokes by Bort, Martha Keavney’s tales of a pet human, Nikki Burch showing us that saying “that’s what she said” too many times will end up with you getting what you deserve, Anne Emond’s cat style, Sam Spina’s ridiculously awesome sex comic, a couple of pages of single panel jokes by Sam Henderson (which should be worth the price of admission right there), Grant Snider’s fears and feats (he had four pages of strips and I don’t want to ruin any of them), KC Green’s depressed fish, Jane Mai’s dream of male lingerie, Nathan Bulmer’s tale of ninja tricks, Julia Wertz’ attempt to get serious and Ian Anderson’s tale of a bear that’s just trying to fit in. But wait, there’s more! And you can discover it for yourself if you buy this. Unless you just have an unnatural hatred for all anthologies, which I guess I could almost understand, but it makes no sense to hate the good ones too, and this is one of the good ones. Hell, just pick three of the names of people who contributed to this, go to their websites and see what there is to see. If you don’t laugh once then I release you from your duty to buy this, but seriously, good luck with that. $10
Comments Off on Various Artists – The Hic and Hoc Illustrated Journal of Humor Volume One: The United States | Reviews | Tagged: Alex Schubert, Anne Emond, Bort, Box Brown, Dakota McFadzean, Dustin Harbin, Grant Snider, Ian Anderson, Jane Mai, Jeff Lok, Johnny Reed, Julia Wertz, KC Green, Lauren Barnett, Liz Reed, Madeline Flores, Mare Odomo, Martha Keavney, Matt Wiegle, Nathan Bulmer, Nathan Stapley, Nikki Burch, Noah Van Sciver, Patt Kelley, Phil McAndrew, Sam Henderson, Sam Sharpe, Sam Spina, The Hic and Hoc Illustrated Journal of Humor, Zac Gorman | Permalink
Posted by Kevin
August 20, 2013
Website
Robbie and Bobby Volume 2: Bottomless Coffee and Candy Cigarettes
So let’s say that you’re somebody who read the first volume of this series and enjoyed it, as you are a human with a sense of humor. If you were tragically born without a sense of humor, I meant no disrespect, but that’s about the only way that I can picture somebody reading this without enjoying it. Anyway, let’s say that that’s true, but still you’re wondering if you should pick up this second volume instead of, say, stopping at a Starbucks and getting coffee a few times this week. Skip the coffee, buy the comic. Simple enough? This is another collection of strips with subject matter that’s all over the place, and once again it’s funny as hell. That’s assuming that hell is a funny place, which is the assumption I always go with. There’s also a little girl who pops up very occasionally, so the cast is expanding ever so slightly. Not that the stories need it, but she is still a welcome addition. Subjects include (and I’m going to do this in the vaguest way possible to keep away spoilers) flying toasters, puppy cones, God’s grenade launcher, a glitter vaccine, book fights, Bobby getting lost in a supermarket, a pizza car, the ghost in the machine, sad games, fart stencils, hammock revenge, a benevolent tumor, a selfish monster and ghost dinosaurs. That’s a small sampling of the many strips in here, which once again includes a few strips from other artists, and they seem to have universally captured the magic of this strip. I’ve said it many times, but collections of strips like these often trend towards being mediocre, usually for the sheer number of strips involved, as some of them are bound to be stinkers. This has not been the case for either volume of this series, as damned near every strip either had me laughing, vaguely creeped out of both. Read this and laugh! $10 (ish)
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Posted by Kevin
August 19, 2013
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With Only Five Plums Book 2: This Dark Age
This is the second of three volumes, so you might want to at least read the review for the first volume before reading this. Or, ideally, read the actual first volume. Anyway, this time around Anna tells the tale of her life immediately after getting separated from her baby, completely unsure about what has happened to the rest of her family. She mentions that she probably wouldn’t have had the strength to go on if she had known what happened to them at this point, so I can once again assume that it’s not going to end well for them. She talks about the experience on the train, packed in like cattle and unsure of where they were going and what would happen to them when they got there, and of how the older women would sometimes tell stories to pass the time. They eventually get to the concentration camp of Ravensbruck, and she again goes into excruciating detail as to what happened to her when she arrived. This volume actually tells most of the story of the war, as we see her trying to survive her three years in this camp, the various sections of the camp and how people would change when (or if) they came back from them, and her eventual march to an unknown location and fate. There’s even her moment at the end when a decent fictional story would have the heart to end on a happy note… but this, by and large, is not fictional. I still have the third volume yet to go, which contains the details of what happened to Anna’s tiny home town and her family, but I’m going to have to wait a few weeks to work up the nerve to go back into this world. No matter how many times I see them it’s always profoundly depressing to read the details of this era, as it’s unpleasant to think about just how close to savagery humanity is at any given moment and how little it takes to push us over that edge. Not that I’m saying that everybody would have behaved like the Germans in WWII, but there have been more than enough other atrocities committed in the years since that’s it’s clearly not that big of a leap for humans to make. Terry Eisele and Jonathan Riddle do a remarkable job of telling this story, as they’re perfectly content to let Anna’s words speak for themselves while still painting an uncomfortably vivid picture of exactly what she went through. This deserves to be seen by as many people as possible, so please give it a look. $10
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Posted by Kevin
August 16, 2013
Website
Pennsylvanians #1
Rarely do I just want to make delighted girlish squealing noises after reading a comic, but that’s my main reaction to this one. This is a genuinely original involving a subject that I was starting to think wasn’t even possible to make original any more, but Bart has really delivered here. I’ll try to contain my enthusiasm for a bit and describe the story to you, but know that I’ll probably have a stupid grin on my face for the rest of the day after reading this. It starts off with a couple having a conversation about what they’ll do if they “get one.” Several of their neighbors already “had one,” after all, and they should be prepared in case it happens to them. While watching the news (which is as close as we get to learning the extent of what exactly is happening) the dog of this couple starts barking, and they discover that one of “them” has arrived. This is the moment where a lesser comic would have had the couple freaking out, or panicking, or generally making a spectacle of themselves. But in this comic the moment is met with a “umm…” and “so…” from the couple. This “them” that I’m talking about, in case you haven’t figured it out so far (or can’t tell what he was going for on that cover) is an alien. These aliens have been coming into the homes of people, silently observing both the people and their surroundings, seemingly spending large amounts of time on insignificant objects. These aliens are also both intangible and imperturbable, something that can be extremely unnerving for the people being observed. I don’t want to spoil a single thing about this as everything about it was such a delight, but the slow burn of this series is going to be a joy to behold. The subtle changes of expression on the faces, the effect when the guy’s arm passes through the alien… I’m going to start describing everything if I don’t watch out. Buy this and enjoy, that’s all I have to say. Or you could read the whole thing on his website, but if enough of you do that that he gives up on finishing this series I’ll hunt you all down and punch you, so don’t forget to give the man some cash for this thing. No price listed, but I’m guessing $5.
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Posted by Kevin
August 15, 2013
Website
Fear of Flowers
I had to double check the name to be sure, but yep: this is the same Jason Viola who does the Herman the Manatee series. It seems like quite a leap to go from that to a comic with three stories/poems about different types of flowers, but hey, why the hell not? You’re not the boss of Jason and he can make comics about whatever he damned well pleases. Although more of those comics would not be frowned upon. Anyway, this is his take on three flowers, and I learned something new about each of them. There’s the sunflower, kadupul and orchid. I’d tell you the new stuff I learned about each of them, but this is a short mini and that would pretty well eliminate the need for you to read it, not to mention take away the joy of discovering this stuff for yourself. You may be thinking “I don’t care about flowers at all,” and I’d be right there with you, but you never know when this information might come in handy. Maybe your knowledge of the intricate composition of a sunflower is just what you need to wow that annoying boss at work, or to seal the deal with somebody you’re trying to date, or possibly save the world when you’re given a pop quiz about flowers by invading aliens. Knowledge is power! $4
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Posted by Kevin
August 12, 2013
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Madtown High #3
This series is getting better all the time. The first two issues may have suffered a bit from “you had to be there-itis” (not a real illness), but this one seemed more universal in its problems. And hey, it’s not a bad thing that she focused so much on things that happened to her in those first two issues, as she is writing these stories about her high school years, but this issue just felt really well-rounded. Does that make sense? Eh, probably not without you reading this, and quite possibly not even then. Anyway, subjects include Whit watching her biology teacher go through a midlife crisis (depression, starting to crawl out of it, getting called out by the principal for the manner in which he was crawling out of it, then vanishing completely), dances and the cliches that happened at each of them (with a great final panel), how they fought back against a Christmas tree that they were forced to put up with near their lunch table (disgusting and hilarious), the mystery of a “poo” on a window and the various people who probably should have cleaned it up at some point, and the fake crush of all the ladies in her group on a particularly creepy teacher and how they used his picture on a birthday cake. This issue is full of funny bits, and once again you’re bound to relate to/cringe at a few of these stories and how they bring you back to your own time in that prison/wonderful early life journey. Oh, and they’re mostly up on her website if you’re too cheap to get the actual comic, but hey, why not throw a few bucks her way?
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Posted by Kevin
August 9, 2013
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The Golem of Gabirol
This is one of those comics that could have used a bit more room to breathe. I don’t mean that in terms of the length of the story, but more in the sense that this should have been the size of a magazine so that the reader had a bit more room to take in all of the little details, because there were bunches of them. The panels telling the story were surrounded (and, in some cases, invaded) by half-seen images of hidden people, leaves, smoke, and a mountain, among many other things. I’ve gotten ahead of myself here. This is the story of man in the 11th century who fell for a woman, but the woman ended up marrying another man. The man who was spurned (although it seemed like he never really even made his feelings known) made a golem with the face of the woman he lost and eventually even made little golem children. This did not go over well with the authorities of the time, but I shouldn’t say much more about it to avoid spoilers. This comic also introduces the notion that the original people who were here were erased when god made the world again, but they live on in the shells of peanuts. Go get a few peanut shells and look at them and you’ll see that a case for that could be made. My only problem with this story was the sheer amount of imagery everywhere, which is pretty much never my complaint, but in this case I had some trouble following exactly where the dialogue was heading (physically, not in terms of the story), which left me scratching my head a few times when something dramatic happened. As always, the most likely explanation is that it’s a failing on my part, but I still think that larger pages could have helped this out. It’s still a fascinating story, and if you’re one of those people who love finding hidden tidbits in art you’re fall in love with this comic. $7
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Posted by Kevin
August 7, 2013
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DemonDust #17
That’s right, the cover show the Karate Kid in space. No, the comic does not build a complicated story explaining how he got into space, but is instead a dreamy comic about letting your mind expand, pondering your existence and trying not to overthink things. Can you relate to that? Sure you can. Bernie is still using this comic to experiment with whatever is most in his thoughts in any given month, but promises in his afterward to get back to more conventional narratives in future issues. For this one you get to spend a little time thinking about the big questions in the world, or at least the best way to go about not thinking about those questions. Three cheers for him keeping this up, and how he finds the time between this and his other projects I’ll never know. But he is making some of you slackers who only put out one book every few years look bad. Are you going to stand for that? Better get to work on your next three projects to show him that you can do it too…
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Posted by Kevin
August 6, 2013
Website?
Optik Noize #4
It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a comic with no clue as to who produced it or how to get in touch with them, but Matthew managed. That’s right, I already know who he is, but that’s only because I’ve been reading his comics for years. His website also appears to be down, so I’m not entirely sure how you’d get a copy of this if you’re interested, but I’ll do a review of it anyway because maybe you’ve also been reading his comics for years and have a good way to get ahold of him. I missed the third issue of this series, but he seems to be telling a continuing story, as the intelligent dog from the second issue is still around. Anyway, this time around Mark has decided to make a few clones of himself to help with an equation that’s been troubling him. No big deal, it just has the potential to solve basically every problem. That sounds a little too all-encompassing to me, not to mention vague, but I’ll let it slide. Mark decides to go to see a movie with Julie and to leave his clones to do the work, the clones run into some troubles and decide that they need another pair of hands, and they find out the hard way that it’s not a good idea to clone a clone. Some tricky moral questions get asked and dropped and a nemesis is still teased at the end of the book. Matthew has done a great job of keeping this a fun series over the years, although I could do with a bit more character development at this point. Still, it might be heading in that direction after the events of this issue, or it might already be there but I don’t know about because I’ve missed a couple of issues. Either way it’s still worth checking out. Provided that you can find a copy, that is, and I’ll update this with new contact information if I find anything out. That includes the price, obviously, so I’ll guess… $4!
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Posted by Kevin
August 5, 2013
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Nurse Nurse
Hooray for this being a completed series! Which is probably an odd thing to say, granted, but I saw the first issue for this ages ago and was afraid that it was one of many series that just sort of petered out. Not so! This story is set far into the future (3030, to be exact) at a time when nurses are being sent out to help out with various illnesses that colonists are coming down with while settling different planets. Earth has long since had a population explosion, so they’re forced to take some risks in keeping humanity growing. Why this constant expansion is always assumed to be a good thing is rarely explained in science fiction stories, but don’t mind an old crank like me, as that has nothing at all to do with this story. Anyway, the main nurse is Gemma, and her fellow nurses sabotage her right off the bat when they get to Venus. On Venus she discovers a mysterious gooey substance that comes from butterflies and seems to be causing people to hallucinate/fall in love with each other. She eventually gets reassigned to Mars, but a butterfly sneaks onboard her ship as she leaves, causing all kinds of problems. This was an eight issue series, but apparently the eighth issue was never released, so even if you were awesome enough to keep up with this series you still don’t know how it ends. Other things that I can mention without spoiling anything probably? Space pirates! Clones! Pandaface! Shooting the leg off a guy! Meeting the most popular band in the universe! A malfunctioning ship! There, that should be vague enough for you to not know what I’m talking about. This series is a pile of fun, especially because the small press comics world does damned little in the way of smart science fiction (or any science fiction at all, really). More like this please, and Katie has left herself a little room for more of these stories, so maybe if everybody reading this buys this book that’ll make it an easy call for her. $15
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Posted by Kevin
August 1, 2013
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Passage
Hey artists, I have a rare rhetorical question for you all that I actually wouldn’t mind an answer to: when somebody says that they thoroughly enjoyed your book/comic/whatever, is it an insult or a compliment for them to say that what they really wanted was to see more? I’d think of that as a compliment, but maybe it’s an insult to the idea of your comic as a complete thing by itself. Either way, and with no insult intended, the only thing I didn’t like about this book was that it felt like a part of a larger whole. Not that it wasn’t complete by itself, it just felt like this could have been 32 pages in the middle of a graphic novel and it would have fit in just fine. This is Tessa’s story of her life when she was roughly 12 and a rite of passage that had been planned for her older brother. Her brother (Finn) had been retreating from the family more and more as he got older, so his dad and a few of his friends wanted to get together to throw him a sort of rite of passage ceremony. Tessa shows brilliantly how her parents had given up many of the trappings of a conventional life years ago, wanting only to exist in their own space with their family, so they thought it was important to let Finn know that his gradually pulling away from them was OK, but they also thought it was important to give him a few pieces of advice before he got too far away. It’s tricky to describe the narrative of this comic, as it bounced around a bit between Tessa and Finn and their parents effortlessly, but it never felt scattered or unfocused. Tessa is becoming a woman but is still forced to deal with her mother’s habit of treating her like a child, their dad had quit his job and loved goofing around with his friends (but still seemed to be an attentive and focused father from what we see here), their mom had her quirks like painting in her studio without showing the art to anybody but was also incredibly devoted to her children, and Finn had moved his stuff into a gazebo in the backyard to highlight his separation from his family. This comic comes down to being able to recognize the times when you’re effortlessly happy and to enjoy them while they’re happening, and who can’t get behind that? The art is layered and complex, far behind the abilities of a non-drawing human like me to fully document but trust me, there is plenty going on in every panel. Her two page spread of her house growing up is a real thing of beauty. There are plenty of tidbits in here that make me want to see the rest of the story, although at least one of those tidbits suggests that she may not be comfortable telling any more. Either way this is a hell of a comic, and looking around online I see that it was rightly nominated for a few awards. I can also see that she’s working on a longer story and has a few older comics available, so there’s still plenty to look forward to from her/go back and read. $6.50
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Posted by Kevin
July 30, 2013
Website
Men’s Feelings
Just to take away the suspense up front: when I see a new comic by Ted May, I’m instantly happy. It’s like getting a new King Cat in the mail (but in an entirely different sense, if you can work your head around that). This is a series of short and longish pieces about a variety of topics, which would have been the definition of a mini comic back in the day, but at least a few of Ted’s rejected titles (helpfully provided at the back of the book) refer to this as a graphic novels, so what do I know? Stories in here include an awkward conversation in a bathroom, a crowd gathering because of a house without its blinds drawn, the best day of a young man’s life turning ugly in a hurry, the hilarity and terror of openly cheating, two older married men telling the truth at a wedding, a young man who is perhaps overexcited by football ordering a pizza, a man with the unfortunate habit of choking on his food testing his luck, and a conversation at a cancelled meeting (the people in the meeting were not told that it was cancelled) thinking back to a quiet moment where he opened a window and smelled the fresh air. Less madcap hilarity that I may have been expecting, but that’s on me, not Ted, and there’s still plenty of funny stuff in here. The sheer banality of the last story of the office meeting was damned funny if you have any experience at all in that sort of setting, and the herd-like American quality of gathering in front of a window just because other people were gathering there was pretty damned funny too. Above all nobody does facial expressions like Ted, as you can probably tell at least a little by that cover if you’ve never read his other comics. And why would you have not read any of his other comics? Do you just hate comics? Baffling. Anyway, as always, this is well worth checking out, whether it’s a comic or a graphic novel or some entirely new thing that we’re now calling comics. $5
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Posted by Kevin
July 29, 2013
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Look Straight Ahead
Somewhere out there is a human with no attention span who started reading this and gave up on it because they assumed that it would end up being another in a long line of graphic novels about a loser trying to get together with the girl of his dreams in high school. Which would be their loss, as this book has only the barest relationship to those very early pages. This is instead a story of madness, the attempts to deal with it and/or avoid it, and trying to come up with a good definition for mental illness. Jeremy is a kid in high school with few friends, but overall he’s made fun of and has very little luck with the ladies. Well, one lady in particular, who happens to be dating one of his few friends. Jeremy escapes a bit into his dreams and art, but these dreams gradually permeate his waking life until he finally ends up smashing a bunch of glass beakers during his chemistry class. It’s always best if you have your freak-out in high school behind closed doors, but Jeremy does not have that luxury, and he ends up getting sent to a facility where they try to get him back to normal. This is where I get into tricky territory in regards to potential spoilers, so I’ll just say that the rest of the graphic novel deals with his conversations with his demons (literally), the ups and downs of trying to regulate his moods and, above all, the world from his perspective. This is where the book really shines, as we’re immersed in his world and his view of what’s happening to him, along with his own internal logic about his conversations with God and his destiny. He also has to complete this destiny before he dies, because “they” have given him cancer and bugs crawling on his brain. It’s some genuinely terrifying and unnerving stuff, and the arc of it is beautifully done. This is damned near required reading for anybody who has had a friend/relative/acquaintance suffer through mental illness, as you see exactly what Jeremy was going through every step of the way. For a first graphic novel it’s damned near perfect, and I’m intrigued to see what else Elaine comes up with. This was published with help from the Xeric Grant, which is now gone, so I’m curious/nervous to see what replaces it. What, aren’t there any rich and famous people who want to help out with this sort of thing? Didn’t I see a quote from Jenna Fischer (from The Office) on an old Renee French graphic novel? Somebody who knows her should see if she wants to help out with a grant like this, as she definitely has a pile of money from that show. But I’ve wandered very far from the subject. Check out this book, that’s what I was getting at before I derailed myself. It should not be missed.
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Posted by Kevin
July 24, 2013
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First Fight #4
I don’t look at things like the Diamond pre-order catalog (assuming that’s even still a thing), and I don’t know if Bryan’s comics would even be listed in such a thing. But for whatever reason I couldn’t help but think of this being described as “a grown man trains for an MMA fight while losing to everybody but a 15 year old kid.” Accurate, but not at all the whole story. For those of you who haven’t been following this series, Bryan lost his first match, was out of it for three years and decided to get back into fighting. This issue deals with Bryan taking some family members to an MMA event to show them what he was getting into and training with both adults and kids to get himself into fighting shape. I have to say that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for me not to check around online to see how this story ends (or at least how it’s progressed if he’s still fighting), mostly because we live in a culture of instant gratification and the production time involved in making and distributing comics is bound to keep him behind real life. With that in mind, it would be helpful if he maybe included a timeline somewhere along the line, although with the events he hasn’t covered yet left out so we can avoid “spoilers.” Of his real life. Maybe “spoilers” is not the right word in this case. Anyway, Bryan is doing the right thing here and taking his time, showing his training and what he’s going through every step of the way. It would be easy for him to put the equivalent of a training montage in here and then just showing his fights, but it’s important to see exactly what goes into an undertaking like this. As a man who’s perpetually not in great shape with periodic bursts of trying to get INTO better shape, I really appreciated his panel when he realized that he couldn’t move the next morning after a particularly tough day of training. I do have one minor quibble: in a story showing how easy it is to do damage to your hand if you hit somebody with your fist, he used the example of Homer Simpson hitting Barney in a bar while Moe stands by. As somebody who’s been watching The Simpsons for the better part of 23 years, I can’t remember such a thing happening. Unless it did, in which case I hope somebody is good enough to remind me of the episode. OK, fine, that isn’t an actual complaint at all, and Bryan probably just wanted to draw some Simpsons characters, which isn’t a crime. This series is still well worth checking out, even if you’re not a fan of fighting and feel squeamish about the whole concept. Believe it or not, the things you’re most squeamish about are also the things that the professional fighters try not to do. Read and be amazed!
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Posted by Kevin
July 23, 2013
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The Index #4: Diogenes
Did the comics community as a whole ever get a ruling on the merits of putting a book out in mini comics form vs. putting it all out at once in a graphic novel? Maybe it’s not a problem that can ever be definitively solved. This series, for example, is a series of philosophical discussions that I’m thinking would flow beautifully as a graphic novel. However, Caitlin hasn’t done a lot of comics before this, so maybe this series will get her the recognition/acclaim/$$$ necessary to get a graphic novel together, while if she had just released this all at once as a graphic novel that wouldn’t have given people several issues to get to love this series. There is no answer! Which is a fine way to attempt to start to review this comic. Segue! Caitlin puts a recap at the start of this one, which is absolutely necessary for anybody who picks this up starting with the fourth issue. John and Susan start off in the burning Library of Alexandria with Otlet taking over the index cards. The two of them instantly start feeling useless, but they deal with it in different ways. Susan wants to go for a walk, John wants to take back control of the situation. We learn about Diogenes and it’s not like anything I said here about the guy would constitute a spoiler, but it’s still better to read all about him and his ways yourself. It’s another madcap adventure into the efficacy of constantly categorizing everything, in this case literally as the library burns down around them. This is one of the smarter series you’re going to see, and if you don’t understand it, yes, that is a personal failing on your part. Nah, kidding, she manages to keep it accessible to everyone. Well, everyone who has a natural sense of curiosity and a desire to understand everything. If that’s you, you’re in luck!
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Posted by Kevin
July 22, 2013
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The Outliers #1
It’s worth taking a minute right away to mention how gorgeous the covers to this book are. Yes, “covers,” as there’s a dust jacket type thing that slips over a silver wraparound cover of what are eventually going to be the Outliers. Which is not a spoiler, as that’s what he says up front, but in this issue we only get to see one of these creatures. Oh hey, I’m jumping ahead of myself. This one opens up with a young boy being forced to get on the “short bus” when his bus has a mechanical problem. He’s riding with another kid who never talks (Tsu), they eventually get into an argument and the bus driver is forced to pull over… but not before he almost runs into the giant leg of a creature that we barely see. The bus crashes, the driver and the talking kid make it out, but Tsu is nowhere to be seen. They make it back to the street to find a giant creature placing the bus back on the road and Tsu chanting some words that seem to be controlling the creature. That would all be alarming enough, but those two are not the only ones who see Tsu’s performance, and these new characters seem to have some decidedly violent ideas for the giant creature and Tsu. From there we get a couple of confrontations, the barest glimpses of what may be going on in the big picture, and a solid setup for what’s still to come. In other words, a damned near perfect first issue. This is one of those times where I’m selfishly happy that small press comics have such a tiny audience, as I have a suspicion that anybody in Hollywood with a brain would snatch this story up in a heartbeat if they knew about it. Instead of getting a compromised big budget version of this story, instead we get the pure story in comic form! Eventually. Unless I’m wrong about somebody in Hollywood finding out about this. Eh, enjoy it while you can, as it’s a genuine blast of a comic. $5
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Posted by Kevin
July 18, 2013
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3-D Pete’s Star Babe Invasion Comics #4
Oh Star Babe Invasion comics, never change. It’s always refreshing to see these retro ladies and read about some of these classic science fiction movies from back in the times when special effects took serious effort to complete (not that the computer stuff is easy on the programmers, but it’s different than the insane amount of time that went into producing stop-motion animation). And for a comic that could easily take one short turn into lewd and creepy, Mike always manages to keep things tasteful and seems to genuinely appreciate the work that these women put into their roles. This one is mostly about Carolyn Munro, who starred in an Italian ripoff of Star Wars called Starcrash (that sounds fantastically cheesy and includes a young David Hasselhoff of all actors), a Sinbad movie and a James Bond movie, among other things. This gives Mike a solid chance to dig into Starcrash, and he joyfully picks apart some of the production problems and ways in which it was obviously lacking in comparison to Star Wars. Hardcore nerds can try and name the characters depicted in the next section to the villains that she played against, but all I could manage was “Jaws” from the James Bond movie, so good luck with that one. Other stories include how quickly computers are going to surpass humans in terms of independent thought, the painstaking process of the special effects of that previously mentioned Sinbad movie, a brief history of Sarah Douglass (the female villain Kryptonian from Superman II) and several full page spreads of either regular pin-ups or what actresses might have looked like in different roles. These comics are always so good-natured that they’re impossible not to like, and this one is no exception. Old and medium-timers, this will give you some serious nostalgia for the good old days (whichever time period applies to you, as we all know that our own preferred period is the best). Young-timers, back in the day they made special effects using actual objects painstakingly placed into position over a period of months or even years just for the sake of one movie. You should look into it! $5
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Posted by Kevin
